Sep 24, 2020 | 3 min read

Innovation in Slow Moving Industries with Andrew Watts

By: Patrick Emmons

Innovation in Slow Moving Industries with Andrew Watts

Lawyers and law firms have to handle a massive amount of documentation. Because of antiquated laws and fear of change, the legal industry has traditionally been slow to adapt to digitalization and cloud tools. That is rapidly changing in the era of COVID-19.

Relativity is a SaaS eDiscovery platform dedicated to digitizing law documents for easy records and transfers. CIO Andrew Watts joins us today to discuss how the industry is adapting, why it’s so important for lawyers and firms to get on the cloud, and what Relativity is doing to be employee focused in an age where everyone is working remote. Tune in for his insights.

  • (01:25) - What is Relativity?
  • (05:29) - The legal industry of the future
  • (10:49) - New-hire integration
  • (15:35) - Seeing value in technology
  • (19:11) - The complex world of e-discovery
  • (21:50) - Cloud-enabled growth
  • (26:56) - Critical visionary elements
  • (33:07) - Keeping everybody on the same page
  • (36:05) - Talent first
  • (40:11) - Urban hiking

Andrew Watts is an experienced IT leader and currently serves as the Chief Information Officer at Relativity. As CIO, Andrew provides leadership in building and supporting Relativity’s information technology along with governance and compliance processes.

Andrew has more than 20 years of experience in IT. Prior to joining Relativity in 2016, he served as the director of IT at Morningstar, an investment research and management firm. At Morningstar, he oversaw a 200-person IT department, led the information technology aspects of 30 acquisitions and two divestitures, and implemented both major system enhancements and significant technology and security improvements.

Before moving to Chicago, Andrew held several IT positions in Australia, his home country. Andrew holds a computer science degree from the University of Technology Sydney.

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About Patrick Emmons

If you can’t appreciate a good sports analogy, movie quote, or military reference, you may not want to work with him, but if you value honesty, integrity, and commitment to improvement, Patrick can certainly help take your business or your career to the next level. “Good enough,” is simply not in his vernacular. Pat’s passion is for relentlessly pushing himself and others to achieve full potential. Patrick Emmons is a graduate of St. Norbert College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Mathematics. Patrick co-founded Adage Technologies in 2001 and in 2015, founded DragonSpears as a spin-off dedicated to developing custom applications that improve speed, compliance and scalability of clients’ internal and customer-facing workflow processes. When he is not learning about new technology, running a better business, or becoming a stronger leader, he can be found coaching his kids’ (FIVE of them) baseball and lacrosse teams and praising his ever-so-patient wife for all her support.

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